PRESERVATION OF WALLPAPERS AS PARTS OF INTERIORS

Historic types of wallpaper and decorative schemes of interiors
styles, and during the Second Empire, in the 1850s and 1860s,
the interest shifted to the styles of Louis XIV and Louis XVI.
A decór composition was made up of various modules. According
to lithographs of the time, such wall decorations were arranged
in the manner of wooden panelling: a panel, a narrower intermediate
panel, a pilaster, a border, corners, a frieze and a cornice, and
for the lower part of the wall, a dado. 110 Panels set in the middle of
decoration were treated as isolated pictures, which were embellished
with bronze or grisaille figures, medallions and allegorical
scenes. The latter were extremely popular until the middle of the
19th century. (Fig. 27) Smaller details, such as cartouches, could be
used near walls and elsewhere, e.g. on fire screens. Since decórs
functioned as vast galleries, they were commonly used to decorate
reception rooms and replaced paintings hung on walls.
For a short period of time, between 1815 and 1848, a style
known as Biedermeier spread throughout the German-speaking
countries and Scandinavia. It never developed into a separate
architectural style, but was connected with bourgeois domestic
life and interior design. A middle-class family usually lived in a
flat, whose size depended on the inhabitants’ wealth. A flat of a
prosperous family consisted of the following rooms: a guest- or
living room, a Gute Stube or clean room for festive events, a dining
room, a study, a salon, bedrooms, a children’s room, a kitchen
and a servant’s room. As the Biedermeier style was strongly
influenced by the principles of Neo-Classicist architecture, the
walls of a bourgeois flat were treated with light colours: white,
yellow, pink, light blue or light green. Besides pale-coloured
paint and wall covers, papers in the French style covered with
a diamond pattern, rose bouquets 111 , vertical stripes or textile
imitation were widely used. (Fig. 28) In the 1820s print rooms,
Kupferstichzimmer, were still common. Such decoration served
as private museums and as representations of their owner’s
views, education and taste, and reflected a deep interest in
Italian Renaissance art and architecture. 112
110
Ibid., 74.
111
Hagemann, Wilhelmine von Lichtenau (1753–1820)..., 282.
112
Hedinger and Berger, Karl Friedrich Schinkel:..., 124.
64